From Pick A Bushel cucumbers to Osteospermum 3D Pink flowers, every growing season offers new opportunities to those with green thumbs. Interestingly, though, this season’s hottest buy may not be a specific plant or flower. Rather, it might plants and flowers labeled “bee friendly.”

“Bee friendly” means plants grown without neonicotinoid insecticide, a popular chemical applied to a seed or soil that becomes part of the plant, which reduces the need for additional treatments.

However, this insecticide also is under scrutiny amid recent massive die-offs of bee populations.

With research unclear on that link, some nurseries and greenhouses are growing and selling “bee friendly” plants. Minnesota Public Radio reported last week a major Minneapolis nursery is among them, and a Times report noted Home Depot is looking into a similar approach.

Kudos to such efforts. They not only provide consumers with more choices, but they send the message that researchers need to work faster to find a clear answer to how neonicotinoids affect bees and other pollinators.

The agriculture community knows the die-off of bees is not a new issue. The longer it continues, the larger the threat (via limited pollination) will be to an industry producing $20 to $30 billion yearly.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2006 identified the die-offs as Colony Collapse Disorder and created a CCD Steering Committee. It, with others, released its last report in 2012, which said many factors are involved in die-offs. The top threat is a parasitic mite.

But with neonicotinoids under scrutiny, it also noted: “Acute and sublethal effects of pesticides on honey bees have been increasingly documented, and are a primary concern. ... The most pressing pesticide research questions lie in determining the actual field-relevant pesticide exposure bees receive and the effects of pervasive exposure to multiple pesticides on bee health and productivity of whole honey bee colonies.”

The report indicates an update is due by the end of this year. Meanwhile, producers of neonicotinoids are continuing research, as is the USDA. Despite those efforts and research, Europe continues a ban started last year on neonicotinoids and two other chemicals believed to harm bees.

Clearly, fears about neonicotinoids are not subsiding, nor are there more answers about impacts. Given that, it’s good consumers will have more choices this gardening season.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

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